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Home of The Saturday Evening PostFri, 09 Dec 2016 16:25:04 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1Gorgeous Hudson River Valleyhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/04/17/health-and-family/travel/hudson-valley.html
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=91154American nature tourism—and an art revolution—began with the Hudson River school. Today the lush scenery that inspired so many artists is nearly as pristine as it was 175 years ago.

West bank of the Hudson River in autumn and the Walkway Over the Hudson that transformed the Poughkeepsie Bridge into the world’s longest elevated park. Photo courtesy Shutterstock.

What American artists once considered the center of the universe is only about 125 miles up the Hudson River from New York City. As someone who grew up in the West, maybe I can deal with that, but the fact that the center of the universe happens to look something like a Persian harem house from a 1950s pulp romance cover comes as a complete surprise.

Olana, once home of artist Frederic Church, though, does have exactly the view I’d expected: the Hudson River, in low light, turning the water as silver as the good tableware your grandmother only got out at Christmas.

And that’s what I’ve come here for. That view.

Where I come from, you can go hours without seeing a single person and water is rarely more than a trickle. Put me east of the Mississippi River, though, and I not only feel the urge to jump in, find out what that much wet feels like, but the number of people around starts me feeling like I’ve been jammed into the back of a clown car, and it’s never going to completely empty out.

But there was a moment in history when the east was as empty as the landscape in a John Ford cowboy movie, and it was here, along the Hudson, that the record of the time was captured by a group known as the Hudson River school of painters. Depending on which expert you ask, they were active from maybe as early as 1825, certainly by 1850, and had pretty much all died out or gone on to something else by the end of the Civil War. That was when the world’s concerns had moved on to things other than idyllic views of mountains and rivers and crags and dark forests, the landscape of fairy tales and haunts, of places that have never seen a human footprint. Think of them as the visual equivalents of the transcendentalists in writing—Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, who were working at around the same time.

So I’ve come to look at the views they looked at, see if the landscape is still recognizable. See if we can still transcend.

What the Hudson River school did was paint huge canvases of the wild, a world of towering mountains, skies that never stopped, storm clouds the size of whatever countries their ancestors had fled, waterfalls pouring down like nature had nothing whatsoever to do but be profligate. They put Rembrandt light behind endless forests. And if they put people in their work at all, they were tiny, overwhelmed by the scale, by the size of the world itself. Frederic Church, the big gun of the movement, made some paintings so large that when they went on display, audiences used opera glasses so they could see all the details.

Frederic Church’s beloved home—only slightly smaller than a modern day shopping mall—is open to the public. The artist painted the estate and its sweeping views multiple times. (Compare this landscape to a painted version, below.)

And that gave him the money to come here, to Olana, where he built a house only slightly smaller than a shopping mall—and now open for tours. His studio is a long room on one end of the house, Persian-influenced details worked into the walls and ceilings, into the shapes of the doorways. Though he travelled widely throughout his career, once Church created Olana, he stayed as close to home as he could. Why bother to go anywhere else? As far as he was concerned, it was truly the center of the world.

And so he spent much of his life painting the river that dominates the view from the front of the house. Olana is home to an American castle, a huge place for huge paintings of a huge landscape. But it’s a weird contrast to Thomas Cole’s own house, just five or 10 minutes away (and to get between the two, you cross the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, which just because of its name makes me ridiculously happy).

Clouds over Olana (August, 1872) is one of Frederic Church’s signature works. The artist described this site of his not-very-humble abode as “the center of the world.” Courtesy Collection Olana State Historic Site, NYSOPRHP

Considering the whole school was Cole’s idea to begin with, it’s odd that his whole house isn’t much bigger than Church’s studio. Cole’s house has a balcony on the second floor with no doors leading out to it; even if you climbed out the window, the view would only be of trees. He owned land clear down to the river, but was happy in this house where he couldn’t see the water at all. Did he spend too much time painting, thinking about it? Was he afraid seeing it day after day would ease its power over his imagination, overwhelm him by scale the way it did Church?

Cole’s 1825 Lake with Dead Trees is usually considered the first true Hudson River school painting. It might, in fact, be the first time anybody ever really looked at the United States and didn’t try to see Europe instead. In fact, that’s what the Hudson River school was all about, and what makes Cole and his cohorts so cool, such rebels: They reversed a thousand years of European painting, where, even in a landscape, people were still the most important feature. The Hudson River school is declaring that on a continent the size of North America, humans would never be more than punctuation marks.

The earliest settlers in the United States tried to map the old world onto the new—hence, New England, New York, New Hampshire, New Paltz. The Hudson River school thought a hundred years of this attempt at building a continental mirror was enough; they were the first to try and see the landscape on its own terms, for itself.

One single view dominates the Hudson River school. In the mid-1800s, painters ran through hundreds of gallons of paint, acres of canvas, trying to get a particular bend in the river, the view from West Point, the landscape from the high defensive cliffs that are now the riverside boundary of the military academy. You can still go see the view from there; security just means there are a few hoops to jump through, a lot of ID to show, and then face the whole question of why, on one of the prettiest spots along the entire Hudson River, the military decided to build such … military looking buildings. Even the cathedral looks as though it sucks in sunlight as joyfully as a black hole.

But what the military fails to provide, the world offers in abundance. It’s autumn, and every tree on the grounds is busy showing how lavish nature can be: spend all summer growing leaves, just to toss them, a million shades of red and orange, across the neatly manicured lawn, as exuberant as finger painting done by a kid who just discovered a new box of paints.

I stand on the point, the river wide and slow below me, coming around a bend like a graceful dancer. I roll an acorn I’ve picked up across my fingers, as if I could feel in its smoothness the water below. The far bank is trees and a wildness that I always forget is possible in the eastern United States—sorry, but if you grow up in the west, it’s hard to believe New York is not paved from border to border like a Walmart parking lot.

Maybe it’s inevitable that over the past few years, the Hudson River school has gotten organized by its descendants and fans. Whereas I count on luck and stumbling across what I’m looking for, now assorted organizations are putting together trails, pilgrimages to the homes, the locations, the views. Every town museum along the way, every college, has a few Hudson River school paintings. You could spend a day just in the museum near Sarah Lawrence, moving from one view of the river to another. The Hudson River School Art Trail has put together a guidebook, a brochure of sites, a chance to bring this movement under control.

But wasn’t it really all about a lack of control to begin with? Weren’t the painters trying to show that the landscape was always going to be bigger than the people, that there was no good way to tame it?

Thomas Cole’s depiction of the Falls of the Kaaterskill, 1826.

I stop at Kaaterskill Falls, outside Palenville, and near where Rip Van Winkle went to sleep. Cole came here by steamboat passing West Point and planning when he’d paint that before reaching the Kaaterskill cliff. When he got there, he painted the falls from both above and below, and the paintings became so famous that a stop here was as important to early tourists on the river as a look at the Statue of Liberty is to a modern New York sightseer. William Cullen Bryant’s poem on the falls, written about the same time Cole was here, says, “’Tis only the torrent tumbling o’er, / In the midst of those glassy walls, / Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor / Of the rocky basin in which it falls. / ’Tis only the torrent—but why that start? / Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart?”

I walk to the edge of the falls, the torrent dropping away beneath me—the friend who drove me clearly wishing I was afraid of heights, his heart maybe throbbing a bit more than mine—and look at a century of initials carved into the rocks at the water’s edge. Through the 1800s, the nearby hotels would sell picnic lunches, and you could come here and pretend you were inside a painting all day. Even stay at the hotels, if you could afford the $2.50 a night, and live inside this new idea of landscape, what was really new about the New World. Size. Light. Room to redefine. When my ancestors gave up their farm in Scotland, walking away from stone fences their ancestors had started a thousand years before, here’s what they came for.

And it begins here, with how a bunch of people saw the Hudson. And how they showed us to look at the river and through that river, the world.

Because we were raised by the Hudson to expect beauty to unroll forever outside, if we truly pay attention, we are seldom, if ever, disappointed. On the Hudson, wrote Henry James, we travel through “the strong silver light, all simplifying and ennobling … of the last classic elegance, overhanging vast receding reaches of river, mountain-guarded and dim, which took their place in the geography of the ideal.”

Right now, I have a hundred miles of river left to see. When Nathaniel Hawthorne went up the Hudson on his way to Niagara in 1835, he said he’d been putting it off because he didn’t want “to exchange the pleasures of hope for those of memory.”

The river an evening silver beside me, I roll down the car windows, wondering where I’ll cross that balance point of hope and memory. Or if I’ll just find the balance point among all the other beauties there are to see in the geography of the ideal.

It isn’t until weeks later, when I’m back home, before I realize I never once touched the water. The view was all I needed, the only sense I really had to fill.

]]>If You Go: Hudson River Valleyhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/08/14/health-and-family/travel/hudson-river-valley.html
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=89999We asked local experts for the skinny on the hottest hotels and B&Bs should you decide to make the same pilgrimage to the homesteads of Frederick Church and Thomas Cole.

]]>In “Gorgeous!” (September/October 2013), Edward Readicker-Henderson toured the Hudson River Valley in search of historic locales related to the Hudson River School of painters. We asked local experts for the skinny on the hottest hotels and B&Bs should you decide to make the same pilgrimage to the homesteads of Frederick Church and Thomas Cole. Click on the interactive map below for location, contact information, and links (click the name of the establishment), or see our listing at the bottom of the page. Make sure to book early, especially in the fall when the autumn colors bring tourism season to its peak.

What to See:

Olana Historic Site
Home of Hudson River School painter Frederick Church, this 250-acre estate has stunning views of the Hudson River, historic Persian-inspired architecture, and beautiful gardens.

Thomas Cole House – Cedar Grove
Home to Church’s mentor, Thomas Cole, the house offers views of the Castkill Mountains, guided tours of Cole’s home and studio, gardens for strolling, and guided hikes to the spots where Cole would paint his masterpieces.

Hudson River Museum
View a handful of paintings from the Hudson River School of painters on display at this museum of 19th and 20th century American art. If you’re tired of paintings, check out the planetarium or take a walk along the riverfront.

Where to Stay:

This nine-room boutique country hotel is nestled into the bank along the Hudson River. Just two miles from the historic town of Rhinebeck, boutiques, antiquing, and country fairs provide simple, no-frills entertainment for a leisurely day.

Built in the 1870s by a friend of Frederic Church, this B&B has seven rooms, many with sweeping views of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. Numerous windows allow for ample natural night, great for viewing the fall foliage.

Built in 1869, this stunning Victorian castle resort is often named one of the top places to stay by Fodor and Condé Nast magazine. (It also regularly tops the list of best resort spas in the country!) Owned and operated by the Smiley family since its inception, the resort can accommodate up to 600 guests on its sweeping 260 acres.

Winner of the 2013 TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence, this five-guestroom B&B is located on a quiet cul-de-sac street in historic Hudson, New York. Boutique hotel-style amenities like high quality bed and bath linens and a freshly prepared, gourmet breakfast, meet classic B&B attention to experience with nightly turndown service and quaint porches and gardens for respite.

On a mountain overlooking West Point and the Hudson, this four-room inn sits on 300 acres and boasts 360 degree views of the Hudson River and surrounding mountainous landscape. The Garrison is Readicker-Henderson’s choice for best river views, and it’s just around Storm King Mountain and Anthony’s Nose–a favorite spot of the Hudson River painters. Did we mention the 18-hole golf course and critically-acclaimed restaurant (Valley) lauded by the likes of Bon Appetit,Town & Country,Esquire, and The New York Times?

For contemporary elegance, don’t miss this 14-room boutique hotel in Beacon, NY, a town Readicker-Henderson calls the hottest art center in the country (the renowned Dia Museum of Modern Art is there). Ideally located near shops, galleries, and restaurants, the hotel also has two penthouse suites with views of Fishkill Creek and Beacon Falls from the attached private roof decks.

]]>It’s 1931 and the prices are incredibly low. You can buy bread for just 7¢. A quart of milk is 12¢. The national average for a month’s rent is $35. It’s hard to read these prices and not assume that life was a lot less expensive in those days.

With gasoline at 17¢ a gallon, and new Ford sedans available for a mere $450, Nina Wilcox Putnam told Post readers there was never a better time to drive to California.

The best bargain on the American market today is a trip across the country, which can now be had for practically the same price as staying at home.

Automobiles in 1931, she reports in her Post article, “What’ll It Cost Me To Drive To the Coast?” have greatly improved over the past ten years. When she first drove from New York to California in 1921—

I carried spare parts enough to make up a second car, including new magneto points, and used every darned one of them before the first California real ­estate salesman was sighted.

The roads are better, too. Back in 1921, she says, you wouldn’t think of driving across the western states without an axe “for chopping brush to get you out of gumbo roads during Missouri rainstorms” and an extra set of suspension springs “because you were practically certain to break a spring on what were playfully nick­named ‘roads’ in Arizona.”

But even in 1931, Porter says, you had better bring better along a length of strong tow-rope, and a waterbag to hang on the front of the car so you won’t run out of water in the desert.

“And ah, yes, I almost forgot a water­proof tarpaulin. No matter how good the trunk on the back of your car, take it from me you’d better cover it with a tarpaulin. It’s a big square of treated canvas, and it really does prevent dust and moisture from working into the luggage and ruining that one good suit or dress which you’re taking along in case you feel like changing some night at a stylish hotel.

The modern driver of 1931 now has a choice of cross-country routes. Most travelers take the National Road, which runs from Atlantic City to San Francisco, but she recommends a new route between Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

If you are sick of cities and want a vacation from them; if you are tired of passing trucks and of being held up by traffic stop lights, let me submit the new Midland Trail. I’ll guarantee you’ll hardly meet a truck, see an advertising sign or lose a moment through traffic sig­nals.

But let’s return to the question in Putnam’s title: just how much does it cost to drive from New York in California in 1931. Before she started, a New York travel agent had told her—

“With a small car it will cost you five cents a mile, including good but not fashion­able hotels, food, gas and oil, and ordi­nary running repairs. We figure it will take you nine days.”

When she reached her destination outside Los Angeles, Putnam found that she had actually spent a little less than the predicted $165.

Before there were motels, travellers stopped overnight at rustic motor camps, whose comfort level can be guessed by the picture above.

That’s a sizeable figure for a year when unemployment had risen to 16% and was continuing to climb. Yet it’s fairly inexpensive for nine days of sightseeing, hotels, and meals.Yet you could take the same trip for much less today.

Adjusted for 80 years of inflation, $1.00 in 1931 has the purchasing power of $14.50 today. So Putnam’s trip cost her the equivalent of $2,392 in 2011 dollars.

Today, the drive from New York to Los Angeles is 500 miles shorter. Using the gas prices of this last week, AAA’s fuelcostcalculator.aaa.com, determines that a new, inexpensive car (comparable to what Putnam drove) would consume $440 in gas. Furthermore, you wouldn’t need nine days to cover that distance. While I’ve known people who drove that distance in a heroic, three-day marathon, I’ll allow a modern driver six days (450 miles/day) and a daily allowance of $80 for hotels and $50 for food.

The total cost would be $1,220. Divide that number by 14.50 to reverse inflation, and the price in 1931 dollars, would be $84.

Even with the price of gasoline so high today, our per-mile cost has dropped from 5¢ to 3¢ in 80 years. This doesn’t even factor in the three days saved by driving modern highways in more dependable cars—and three days is just as valuable in 2011 as in 1931.

After steering the car for three days during the steep climb toward Point Lookout, Dad remains more than vexed by his little ones’ complete disinterest in “looking out”—a moment immortalized by Post artist Richard Sargent in 1953…

]]>America’s Hidden Treasureshttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2009/06/25/health-and-family/travel/us-national-parks.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2009/06/25/health-and-family/travel/us-national-parks.html#commentsThu, 25 Jun 2009 19:40:28 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=7194“America the Beautiful” is certainly an appropriate description. From the thundering power of the Niagara Falls, the panoramic splendor of the Grand Canyon, and the towering proportions of Mount McKinley, residents are surrounded by some of the most majestic places on Earth. But what about all the places in-between?

]]>“America the Beautiful” is certainly an appropriate description. From the thundering power of the Niagara Falls, the panoramic splendor of the Grand Canyon, and the towering proportions of Mount McKinley, residents are surrounded by some of the most majestic places on Earth. But what about all the places in between? The Post has compiled a list of America’s lesser-known scenic beauty. We invite you to post your tales of visits to these locales and any other hidden treasures below.

Congaree National Park, South Carolina

According to the National Park Service, more than 104,000 people made a recreational visit to the park in 2008, compared to the more than 9 million people that visited the Smoky Mountains. Congaree, the largest old-growth floodplain forest in America, is a treasure trove of wildlife, including everything from river otters to marbled salamanders. The swampland is also noted for its hiking trails, fishing, kayaking, and its 2.4-mile elevated boardwalk.

Crater Lake, Oregon

More than 7,000 years ago, Oregon’s Mount Mazama erupted in one of the most violent explosions known to man. The resulting implosion of the mountain created this 6-mile wide, ½-mile deep lake which features some of the clearest blue waters in the world and is the deepest in the United States. According to the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program, Crater Lake was one of very few eruptions since 10,000 B.C. with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 7. To put it in perspective, Mount Vesuvius (known for the destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum) was a 4. The region’s long winter season, lasting from October to June, makes it one of the snowiest areas in the Northwest.

Isle Royale, Michigan

Located 55 miles north of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and accessible only by boat or plane, Isle Royal creates an incredibly unique ecosystem where scientists and citizens alike flock to study some of the most untouched wildlife in the world. Many of the island chains’ inhabitants, including grey wolves, moose, and muskrats, are normally found over larger areas. Due to Isle Royale’s smaller habitat and limited amount of natural resources, it creates fierce competition among the wildlife, resulting in a survival of the fittest mind-set. Isle Royale exemplifies virgin, pristine wilderness and the ability of life to adapt and flourish against the odds, and that is what makes this park truly special.

Guadalupe Mountains, Texas

Although the Guadalupe Mountains are located in a desert, one of the biggest attractions is a well-preserved, 250-million-year-old fossilized Coral Reef, a reminder of how much life and landscape can change. In modern time, the mountain elevation creates a biological event uncommon in the Southwest: seasonal leaf change. The cactus is king throughout most of the park, but the temperatures at higher elevations are cool enough for deciduous plants to thrive, resulting in a colorful autumn that seems like September in New England with a Texas twist.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller, Vermont

The natural splendor of this national historic park’s Vermont countryside is reminiscent of the land that made our founding fathers fall in love with America. Rolling hills and captivating forests form a backdrop against which the relationship of nature and man is explored. The park is named after four well-known conservationists: George Perkins Marsh, considered by many the father of the American Conservationist Movement; Frederick Billings; and Laurence and Mary Rockefeller. Visitors can tour the mansion and gardens, which were home to all three of the namesakes at different periods of time, as well as enjoy the picturesque woodlands and programs on forestry and other conservation efforts.

Conkles Hollow, Ohio

Located in Ohio’s Hocking Hills State Park, Conkles Hollow is a hiker’s dream. The cooler climate, a holdover from the last ice age, allowed trees such as the Canada yew, Eastern hemlock, and yellow birch to grow farther south than normally found, and Conkles Hollow’s natural coolness has allowed these northern trees to thrive, millennia after the glaciers receded. These trees blend with several native trees, resulting in over 150 different species putting on a colorful display every fall. Several trails lead through this scenic area, including a 3-mile rim trail overlooking the gorge from atop its 200- to 300-foot cliffs.

Great Basin, Nevada

The Great Basin National Park, which was visited by less than 70,000 people in 2008, is only a small piece of the large area known as The Great Basin, which covers virtually all of Nevada and a good portion of the surrounding states. It has an independent hydrology, meaning water here does not flow into larger systems like the Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico, but instead remains self-contained. This national park showcases the best facets of this region. The varying elevation (between 5,000 feet and 13,000 feet) allows a wide variety of life to flourish, and at night stargazers get a chance to see an astounding array, including spectacular views of the Milky Way, with the naked eye.

Redwood National Park, California

Visitors are astounded by the sheer magnitude of the Redwoods towering up to 325 feet overhead—the tallest trees on Earth. Home to salmon-filled streams, grassy meadows, the Pacific coast, and tide pools (rocky formations that hold water during low tide and sustain unique life forms), Redwood National Park has more to offer than the trees. An immense variety of animals, from the aptly named banana slug to the Pacific gray whale, live here. Fewer than 400,000 people visited this pristine forest last year, while neighboring Yosemite hosted more than 3.4 million.

Glacier Bay, Alaska

The name “Glacier Bay” offers unique insight into these icy giants which shaped the natural landscape of North America. In 1794, Captain George Vancouver and his crew surveyed a glacier of immense proportions (4,000 feet thick, 20 miles wide, and 100 miles long). This icy, barren landscape supported little life. However, it retreated some 60 miles over the next 125 years, and a bona fide wildlife haven was left in its wake. Killer whales stalk seals in these icy waters, while their larger relatives, humpbacks and gray whales, come for prey of a much smaller variety—plankton and krill. Another predator, the extremely rare blue bear (or glacier bear) can be found on land in this hidden treasure, along with hundreds of other animals, scenic mountains, and new-growth forests.

Nantahala, North Carolina

The Cherokee, who are native to this national forest, call it Nantahala, meaning the “Land of the Noonday Sun.” High noon is the only time the sun is not blocked by the western North Carolina Appalachians. This forest boasts a wealth of attractions, including awesome waterfalls, 400-year-old trees, scenic gorges, and the 5,200-foot high Wayah Bald. The Nantahala River is known as one of the best places to go whitewater rafting in the United States and is a great spot for fishing. This place also boasts a captivating history. During one of the darkest times in American history, the Cherokee were forcibly removed from much of the southeastern United States in the “Trail of Tears.” However, a brave few used the Nantahala as cover, hiding among the trees and successfully avoiding Andrew Jackson’s forces. They live here to this day, preserving a way of life that was nearly destroyed and demonstrating the resilience of the human spirit.

Waimoku Falls, Hawaii

The adventure of getting to this spectacular Hawaiian waterfall is almost as much fun as seeing it. First, visitors hop on to Maui’s famed Hana Highway, a 60-mile stretch of road known for hairpin turns and breathtaking views. Then, they venture onto Haleakala National Park’s Pipiwai Trail. Roughly 4 miles round trip, this hike showcases scenic waterways, stunning ocean views, and lush vegetation. The trail ends at majestic Waimoku Falls, a 400-foot waterfall that drops over a sheer lava wall into a pool of boulders. Waimoku Falls is one of Hawaii’s “Seven Sacred Pools,” many of which can be seen along the trail.

Black Canyon, Colorado

Narrow walls and stunning, sheer vertical drops of well over 2,000 feet render Black Canyon a sight to behold—for anyone without a fear of heights! The Gunnison River, which runs at the bottom of the canyon, settled on its current course millions of years ago. Slowly but surely, the river has been cutting away ever since, sometimes as slowly as 1 inch every hundred years. The combination of water and time created an awesome natural wonder, as well as a rocky timeline of Earth’s history. From relatively young rock at the top to nearly 2-billion-year old Precambrian-age rock at the bottom, the canyon showcases geology from almost every era of life. Only 160,000 people visited the Black Canyon in 2008, compared to the 2.7 million visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park and over 4.4 million to the Grand Canyon, making it a hidden treasure indeed.

Mammoth Cave, Kentucky

At roughly 367 miles long, Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system in the world. To put its “Mammoth” size in perspective, consider that it is more than 200 miles longer than its runner-up, South Dakota’s Jewel Cave. Mammoth Cave offers beauty in addition to sheer size. Astonishing geological features have been created from thousands of years of water running over limestone. More than 80 forms of trees and 1,200 types of flowering plants reside harmoniously above ground and 300-million-year-old fossils have been discovered in the cave.

North Cascades, Washington

Washington’s Olympic Park, renowned as one of the best national parks in the country, features a fabulous array of different terrains, wildlife, and ecosystems and attracted more than 3 million visitors in 2008. However, visitors who prefer the road less traveled will rave about nearby North Cascades, an off-the-radar wilderness that rivals its interstate neighbor in astonishing natural scenery and ecological diversity. This National Park Service Complex, which also includes Lake Chelan and Ross Lake, is a true gem. The relatively small number of visitors—about 19,000 to North Cascades, 25,000 to Lake Chelan, and 253,000 to Ross Lake in 2008—is astonishing. Those that do come enjoy a serene, tranquil landscape with privacy harder to come by at other, more well-traveled parks.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota

Theodore Roosevelt had no idea what was in store when he first came here on a hunting trip in 1883. He, like many at this time, had come to hunt the prized buffalo. After the deaths of both his mother and wife, mere hours apart, he returned here to start a new life as a cattle rancher. This rebuilding period changed Roosevelt. Enchanted by the wide-open spaces and captivating scenery inherent to the Badlands, he realized that America is a special place, full of beauty, and that it is important to preserve it. Without this chapter in his life, we might never have had the conservationist president, whose efforts created the National Park Service as we know it today. This park, which was initially part of the ranching business, is named in his honor. Today, visitors enjoy the same landscape; a wide variety of northern grassland plants and animals, including a healthier bison population; and a spectacular night sky, occasionally featuring the northern lights.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Driving along the “Going to the Sun” highway, visitors will be awestruck by the glacially carved mountain backdrop and 1 million-plus acres of untouched wilderness, teaming with a thousand types of wildflowers and wildlife ranging from bighorn sheep to the Canada lynx. Across the border, Canada’s Waterton-Lakes National Park preserves the uninterrupted natural landscape, and together they form the world’s first international park, appropriately titled Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.